


behind the gate, dawn

by hellebored



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Battle of Dale, Battle of Five Armies - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Legolas Greenleaf & Tauriel Friendship, POV Tauriel, Physical Disability, War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 00:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19140286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellebored/pseuds/hellebored
Summary: Erebor's gate may fall, and all will be lost. She chooses to stand here regardless, or die trying, among the people who have chosen to keep her.





	behind the gate, dawn

**Author's Note:**

> On March 17th 3019, the combined forces of Dale, Erebor, and the Iron Hills fight the Easterlings in an attempt to hold the city of Dale. After three days, exhausted and outnumbered by Sauron's allies, they retreat into Erebor and barricade the gate. The Ring is destroyed on the 25th, and on the 27th the dwarves and Dalish leave the mountain and defeat the Easterlings.
> 
> This scene takes place the first night of their retreat into the mountain.

Blinking past the sting of tears, Tauriel unconsciously rubs a dust-whitened sleeve across her face; it does little more than worsen the reason for her tears in the first place by pushing more grit into her eyes. She tries to focus on the field through the haze. Smoke roils thick and black with impurities from burning fat. Even from the heights of Erebor's defenses the air stinks with the sickly-sweet smell of charred flesh.

Directly below her perch on the ramparts, Kíli fights perhaps a hundred yards out, across the bridge and to the left, while Fíli stands near Brand much further to the right. She'd be irritated by the arrangement if she could afford that sort of indulgence: hard enough to protect them both when they're back to back, and nearly impossible with them split so far apart. The Easterlings have many archers mixed into their ranks of footmen whose slender-tipped arrows pierce even mail.

Kíli continues to shift further left, forcing her to lean out to keep him in sight. On both sides of the gate, their archers have begun to cluster in lines along the seam of the mountain like ticks burrowed into folds in a deer's hide. They had to lay down ladders topped with planks to cross the stream, but it surprises her they hadn't considered it much earlier. She would have.

The Easterlings have pushed hard since dawn; the forces protecting Erebor have retreated toward the mountain until their circle flattens into a crescent at its base. Five hundred years of experience claws at her mind with the grim knowledge that, at the rate their enemy continues to pare down Fíli and Brand's half-circle, not even a sliver will be left by morning.

Braced in the shelter of a merlon near the eastern side of the ramparts, she ignores the pulsing ache in her knee and leans out with her bow, arrow flying swift from her fingers. A dark form crumples at the base of the mountain. The body slides off the narrow lip and into the stream, shoved aside for another to take his place.

Leaning back into safety, she shifts her weight onto her good leg. One of the leather straps on her brace has started to crack; idly she makes a mental note to request Dagní's help replacing it. It will hold for now, and if it doesn't she'll wedge herself in some corner with the space and view to draw her bow and stay put until the battle ends. Not that she'd have much choice to do otherwise.

 _You could hop,_ she thinks with a rueful smile.

She breathes in and leans back out. Another arrow. Another body.

A quick glance reveals the Easterlings continue edging inwards along the stream. If enough of them gather on this side of the bridge it would place an obstacle between Erebor's people and the gate. There are too many of them on both sides, too close to the mountain, and even with a score of Dalish on the ramparts and several solid archers from the Iron Hills they won't manage to stem that tide, not unless the walkways the Men of Rhûn made to cross the deep stream are destroyed—

 _Kíli,_ she realizes. It's why he'd left his brother: to cut a swath with several dwarves to the Easterlings' crossing-point, and soon it will take him out of sight.

She'd saved him once. What she'd freely given in exchange for his life means she can't follow him now. She swallows, crown of her head meeting the stone merlon at her back with a soft thud, eyes screwing shut for one brief breath.

Fíli still holds near the bridge. If she can't protect Kíli, she can at least watch over the king.

 

—

 

The sunlight, weak and watery through the darkened veil of war, starts to falter.

Two distinctive horns ring through the plains, one and then the other, the first low and throaty and the second high and clear: she knows them both and what they mean. Two kingdoms signaling retreat. Her heart stutters, caught somewhere between despair and relief. Relief, because it means perhaps no one else will die tonight; despair, because she knows the burden of living fenced into a besieged kingdom. A war of attrition lasts only as long as the food supply. Or the defenses.

Voices directly below yell, the words unclear even to her ears, lost to screaming and thousands of blades striking off metal. The intent behind them must be clear to whoever was meant to hear: the gate opens.

A change overcomes the Easterlings, visible even from above, excitement sending renewed energy into their limbs. Her mouth twists with bitter pity. They have their own hopes; these are Men, not orcs, and in years past they'd engaged in trade with the people they've now been sent to kill. She takes no pleasure in their deaths. Another arrow leaves her bow.

Dwarves and the Dalish turn toward the gate; the mountain draws them back in a great inhalation, with Fíli and Brand holding the rearguard while their people funnel between them.

She scans the field. Pockets of Erebor's forces remain cut off from the main host, and trying to make their way back to the gate now will be like swimming up a raging river. Some of them, the closer, larger groups may yet make it. The grim truth is the rest were already lost some time ago.

She picks off another Easterling hugging close to the mountainside and nearly drops the next arrow at what stands behind him. An axe strikes low and another Easterling falls into the stream: Kíli's group, forcing their way through. The sight of him washes over her, fierce as rapids, a knot of despair and guilt unraveling all at once. Her heart sings alongside her arrows as she helps clear their narrow path.

She pictures a foul barbed tip finding him at this final moment, his body falling in sight of safety, and then he's directly below her and out of sight. Her good knee shakes along with the bad: instead of letting herself crumple to the stone floor in relief, she tightens her jaw until her teeth grind together and nocks another arrow. There are a full five hundred yet to pass through the gate, and another fifty further out like boats on a stormy lake. Her own feelings mean nothing.

She shoots three more men. When her fourth falls she watches one of his companions drop at his side, brought down with precise aim from her right, and when she looks—

Kíli's there, with another arrow already between his fingers and a breathless, laughing smile that says he knows he's surprised her; it kindles in his brown eyes and creases their edges, carefree and pleased as a child for one perfect moment. Of every gift he's given, every sweet word and jewel, his bedraggled, weary face beaming up at her surpasses them all.

 

—

 

The Easterlings' siege weaponry hammers against the gate, deep and resonant, turning thick metal into a giant drum. The long echoing sound penetrates even as far back as the small council chambers Fíli favors that are set off from the Great Chamber of Thrór.

Someone had thought to hastily put together a platter from the pantries for the king and his advisors. While not counting among that number, occasionally Tauriel chooses to accompany Kíli; he'd made it plain to Thorin from the earliest days that his feet wouldn't cross the threshold of any door where she wasn't permitted to follow. For many years that meant there were rooms Kíli never entered, but Thorin had softened with time.

Several of Fíli's council sit at the table to eat. Fíli remains standing; he doesn't seem to have much of an appetite beyond a pint of light ale. Neither does Kíli, who leans heavily against a pillar, possibly afraid if he sits he won't be able to get up again.

Fíli runs a hand from his eyebrows to his mustache, and then takes a long, hasty drink of ale. It streams down into his beard, not that he seems to care; it's probably the cleanest liquid his clothes have seen in days. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve and sets the tankard on the smooth green stone table. "I've sent ravens from the western door, but…"

At Fíli's side, Dwalin crosses his massive arms, drumstick still in hand. "To where?"

"West. And south."

"West?"

"Ered Luin. And Moria."

Dwalin shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Years ago, before she'd learned to see past his intimidating stoicism, Tauriel might have mistaken his uneasy expression for a glower. "That's…"

Fíli lifts a brow, almost smiling.

"Desperate? I know," he says, and with a deep breath he pulls back his shoulders, hand resting on the pommel of what was once Thorin's sword. "We can wall up the gate in the meantime, but I'm not ready to treat this as our tomb just yet. Dale's generosity in trade will feed us all for perhaps eight months. On thin rations, at least. That's time enough for hope."

Kíli, silent until now, chokes on the first sound he tries to make and pauses to clear the gravelly rasp from his throat. "And south?"

Fíli frowns down at his ale, looking less certain. "There are free kingdoms of Men still standing, last we heard. Gondor and Rohan. I don't know if they'd come for our sake, but perhaps for Dale they might. Brand sent a letter alongside mine."

"There is one kingdom you haven't considered," Tauriel says softly.

"I have considered it, my lady," Fíli says, not unkindly, meeting her gaze with frank, tired blue eyes. "From the look of the skies over Mirkwood, I doubt your king is prepared to send aid to anyone. No more than I'm prepared to send any of our people to him." He sighs heavily, and turns to Glóin, who sits at the table with a troubled expression under his greying eyebrows. "Master Glóin. Your news from Rivendell suggests no kingdom, south or west, is safe, if the war has finally come to us. I admit I'm glad Thorin didn't live to see this day."

Shaking his shaggy head, Glóin pushes up to standing; he lumbers over, limping slightly, and grasps Fíli's elbow.

"Thorin knew better than most the reasons Mahal gave us such thick skulls. Nothing good comes to us for free. Nothing good _stays_ without a fight." A smile, soft and wistful, lifts the corners of his beard. "You must know he'd have made the same choice, even if it were just for Bilbo's sake and not the fate of all. He believed we stand or fall by faithfulness to friends. He'd be proud of this day, lad. He'd be proud of _you_."

Beside them, Dwalin unfolds his arms and tosses his drumstick on the table. He lays a flat palm against Fíli's back with a solid smack; it translates to little more than a pat through Fíli's thick plate mail.

"We stand with you on this side of the gate, same as on the other," he says, gruff voice all kindness. "I couldn't ask for a better king. Thorin would think the same."

Fíli's eyes shine. He nods toward the floor, once, and the beads in his golden braids catch the light where they aren't covered in gore. Lifting his head, he looks across the table at Kíli, whose pale, dirt-streaked face breaks into a smile: Kíli pushes himself away from the column and saunters to Fíli's side, chest high and back straight, as though no great weight presses down on either of them, no war, no weariness. Grasping both Fíli's shoulders, he rests their heads together.

Some feet away, Tauriel hears their low words well enough. She wraps her arms tight around her ribcage: for a moment she misses her own brother desperately, his laughter and mischief and the compassion that runs through him like clear water, so deep she's never reached the end of it. They won't ever know him as she does, her proud and haughty prince, but she sees an echo of his love in Víli's sons.

 

—

 

As they climb the sloping stairs to their halls, Tauriel matches Kíli's shorter strides, a hand slung lightly across his shoulders.

She knows the way he moves; his energetic step in the morning, the extra effort when they climb together after a long day, contented and tired. Tonight his feet hesitate over each step as if it were a path of sharp rocks instead of smooth stone.

Most of the halls they pass are ghostly quiet behind their finely-carved doors. All the children and expectant mothers, Dalish and dwarven, were shepherded to deeper caverns. Those who remain now are the fortunate ones, people like Kíli and herself, hoping to catch a few hours of rest in their own beds before returning to stand watch at the gate; or, alternatively, the ones who were too injured to keep fighting but not injured enough to be actively dying and taking space in the infirmary.

The door to their own halls echoes in strange silence. Everything lays as it was when they'd left in haste three days before. Kíli's clothes on the floor, a plate of small wild strawberries half-eaten in the sitting room; spring lilies wilting on her desk. A glimpse of a life either preserved to gather dust or fated for plunder—unless the darkness at their doorstep _doesn't_ batter against them until the rocks themselves crumble under its persistence. It seems entirely possible, coming from an enemy with the patience to send his hideous messenger three times over the course of a year.

She leads Kíli into their washroom. It feels like some grace of the Valar that the hot taps still work. Everything beyond the great gate has been churned into mud, and it seems strange, somehow, that their lives can be resumed; that there's perfectly functional plumbing, forges to provide steady heat, pipes to carry water to wash off blood.

If the gate falls there won't be hot water or cool bedrooms with soft clean sheets. There will be bodies strewn in the great hallways, parents murdering their own children, the grim remnants of resistance routed in the weeks to come and killed in their hiding-places. But the gate holds.

For now.

Dale was less fortunate. She'd ridden to the city and passed the first two nights of the siege defending from its proud golden battlements until the gates splintered off their hinges. Dalish elders, remembering the fall of Smaug and the ensuing battle from their own distant childhoods, had attempted to convince families to send their children, their elderly and infirm, to Erebor before the field between their kingdoms became impassible. Most listened. The rest—

Billows of smoke hover above Dale's crumbled husk, the smudge of a greasy thumbprint on the sky that hangs heavy on her mind whenever she closes her eyes.

Light from shafts to the outside catch in crystal lamps overhead. It seems duller tonight, muddy and almost red, but she needs little light to see by.

Now that they're alone, no battle inside the mountain, no council, she finally allows herself to _look_ at him.There's filth over every inch of his armor, his beard, his face. Several of his fingers were smashed but not broken: they still curl and straighten. A nasty blow to the side of his head with some hook or barb had gouged his scalp, but other than the cosmetic damage and alarming amount of blood plastered down the nape of his neck, the damage seems minor. 

She loosens his armor, unbuckling the chest piece and sliding his forearms out of their vambraces. Heavy padding under his mail sticks to the linens underneath. He starts to shiver as she peels layers off that reek of sweat and bile. 

A dark stormcloud of bruises bloom across his shoulders and upper arms. Sweat had soaked through several layers of thick wool socks and rubbed both his heels raw, and even through a padded gambeson, blows to his forearms had left fist-sized welts, bruising down to the bone. It hurts to look at his broken places, fills her with a deep aching sadness that makes her want to weep, but her eyes are grit-dry from dust and powdered granite.

With a hiss he lowers himself gingerly into the steaming bath and makes a perfunctory attempt at scrubbing grime off his body, but his hands falter over the bloody mess on his head.

 _Here,_ at last, is something she knows how to fix. She cleans clotted blood from the gash and then plaits strands of hair from both sides of the wound into tiny braids to pull the edges together.

Perhaps—sometime later—when he is whole again and her fingers tangle against his scalp and the healed ridge they find there, he will laugh and say _would you still love me if it was my face?_ as though a bright smile and dark clear eyes are the only stars in the vast constellation of her love for him. If he’d ducked a little slower or turned the wrong way someone would be stitching his split-open skull for burial instead, and she would still love him then.

When she finishes, Kíli hauls himself out of the water to perch beside her and rubs at his face with a towel, hair fluffing out in all directions. His beads glint softly in their tray by the bath; she leaves them there. It would take too much time to do his braids now.

Wrapping the towel around himself, he starts the tub refilling with fresh water, and kneels beside her to release the straps on her brace with stumbling fingers.

She touches his cheek. “I can manage."

"Dwalin _did_ send me away to look after you," he says in a reasonable tone, unthreading the stiff buckles above and below her knee with tugs that somehow manage to be both careful and pointed at the same time. She knows very well when he's trying to win an argument with just his hands or the jut of his beard.

" _Dwalin_ was trying to get you out from underfoot."

Freeing her leg, he flashes a tired grin before moving on to her boots. "He's getting old. I like to humor him on occasion, at least until he's not looking."

"Kíli," she says, narrowing her eyes over a hunch, "if you are _foolish_  enough to consider returning to the battlements tonight—"

He lays a hand on the outside of her thigh in reassurance; she feels the tremor in it. "Not tonight, but I _will_ go tomorrow. All I need's a night's rest and then I'll take my turn on watch. First thing in the morning."

She very much doubts that, but unless he's too stiff to raise his head, or too shaky to walk alone and attempting to use one of her canes to stagger down the stairs like a drunkard, she won't be the one who stops him.

Distracted by her thoughts, she swings her feet over the ledge into the bath and tries to stand. A sharp pain lances up her left knee: her legs buckle and she slips backwards, water surging up and onto the washroom floor, but instead of slamming into the tub's edge she feels the length of Kíli's arm between her and the stone.

He gently pushes her forward and helps her sit up. His pulse beats heavily through his palm; it takes a moment for him to catch his breath. "Are you hurt?"

Feeling a prickle of irritation at her carelessness, she presses along her tender leg. It reminds her of trees in the Greenwood that continue to put out leaves even while the core rots away; they may yet live for several hundred years but would collapse over the course of one winter under the strain of a flet. For nearly eighty years her knee has refused to bear her weight.

Beyond that, and a low throb that never quite disappears, she has no issues with it.

"I think I've bruised my dignity," she says dryly.

He threads his fingers through a strand of her hair. "I've no dignity myself, my love," he says, the knitted line between his brows flickering between amused and anxious. "Never have, but you? _You_ could be the clumsiest elf to ever live and still move with more grace than the stars in the sky."

She shakes her blushing head, trying not to laugh and mostly failing. Sometimes the things he says sound like stanzas from high poetry of the Second Age; it feels out of place to hear such things applied to her.

Settling himself on the edge of the bath, Kíli begins to card through her braids. The granite dust powdering her hair has turned it grey like the trappings of old age: it billows across the surface of the bathwater and coats the bottom in a thin layer of grit.

Her fate might have been much worse than minor scrapes and a coat of dust. For a few desperate hours early yesterday morning, archers on Dale's ramparts had been forced to stand within catapulting range of the Easterling's siege towers and endured a rain of rock crumbling on them from above. By the time men of Dale brought the towers down, the upper defenses of the wall looked like a mouth of broken teeth and many of the archers on the western end were buried.

Moving on to her face, Kíli wipes crusted blood from her swollen eye. She'd forgotten about it entirely until it starts to throb under the pressure of the hot washcloth. His fingers trace along a tender place, eyes troubled.

"I looked for you every time their rocks struck the wall, and cursed myself for fighting on the wrong side of the gates. I should have stood beside you."

Several times she'd caught him searching, eyes scanning the battlements for a glimpse of bright auburn hair amongst the taller ranks of Dalish archers. He'd frightened her whenever he'd lost focus. At least he'd had Fíli at his back and her arrows from afar; she'd done her best to shelter them both. It seems an impossible task against an evil that scouts and allies say has spread to the doorsteps of every stronghold in Arda.

Pieces of her long life are splintering, washing away in a fierce southeastern storm. Somewhere in the vastness of the world the brother of her heart wanders alone and far from his burning kingdom; the Greenwood defies the darkness from beneath a thick plume of smoke.

Here, to its east, Erebor's gate may fall, and all will be lost. She chooses to stand here regardless, or die trying, among the people who have chosen to keep her.

Kíli leans close from his perch on the tub's edge and presses his forehead to her temple. For a long moment they sit braced against each other like kindling over a fire, until his breath turns drowsy against her cheek, edging toward the long, even cadence of sleep. She nudges him awake and rises out of the tepid water with a hand on his shoulder.

When they make it to bed at last, he’s asleep before he's fully tucked himself alongside her; his arms find their home around her waist anyway, sooty lashes feathered against the curve of her breast.

Her own exhaustion, more emotional than physical, bears down with a weariness that doesn't quite translate to her body. Before dawn spreads its rusty light she'll rise and shoulder her bow, join the Dalish and dwarven archers on the battlements; pick off Easterlings at the gate until Erebor's vast supply of arrows runs dry.

The irregular echo of the battering ram thrums through the rock, too low and faint for any ears but hers this far back from the gate. It feels like the heartbeat of the mountain. A lullaby, dark and solemn, singing softly that its defenses still hold.

Tauriel brushes a damp curl away from the bristled curve of Kíli's cheek; her husband breathes against her skin, steady and quiet. She closes her eyes.

 

—

 

**Author's Note:**

> I took a few liberties with the stream in front of the gate. In the books it runs north-south out of the mountain, straight down from the gate, and the bridge is almost east-west across it. In the movies the stream is perpendicular to the gate and the _bridge_ runs north-south, and that's what I went with. I imagine that, as with defensive moats, a defensive stream would probably have a bit of space left between it and the wall of the castle/fort, though I'll admit it's been a few years since I took a class on Irish castles, and _none_ of them were super awesome mining kingdoms carved deep into a mountain. Can you believe that?
> 
> I've never read any fics where Tauriel has permanent injuries after BOTFA; read some great ones where it's Kíli, but honestly I would love to read more stuff that casually includes elves with disabilities. That's gotta be a thing, y'know? The idea that maybe they just choose to die instead of living disabled is probably my least favorite slice of bullshit ever. 
> 
> I have a few other ficlets planned for this au, but we'll see if they get finished. I write slower than the eventual heat death of the universe, haha.
> 
> Also...I did the math, and… Kíli would be exactly twice the age he'd been during BOTFA, to the year, which for some reason hurts me.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I love these two nerds, very, very much. Feel free to come bother me about them on tumblr; I'm @philosoverted.


End file.
